The Tyranny of Texas Barbecue

As Texas barbecue becomes gospel at home and abroad, so do its rules and strictures. Here, a 'cue historian weighs in on why that's a problem.

Robert Moss

A Canadian journalist interviewed me recently for a piece on “real American barbecue” (versus what Canadians call “barbecue” and we here in the South call by the correct term, “grilling”). He was shocked to learn that in the Carolinas, where I live, people don’t wait in line for hours to eat barbecue, and that restaurants almost never sell out of meat before closing time.

“That’s just down in Texas,” I told him. “People wouldn’t stand for it here.”

It confirmed something that’s long worried me: that the recent trendiness of Texas-style barbecue is warping the way the American barbecue tradition is perceived not only internationally, but also right here at home.

Texas' influence surged over the course of last decade, driven by a flood of media attention. The arrival of Texas-inspired joints in New York City—most notably Hill Country, which opened in 2007 and recreated a Lockhart-style meat market in the heart of Manhattan—put the Lone Star style front and center in the country’s media capital. The celebrity of Austin brisket-master Aaron Franklin, who burst onto the national scene in 2010, only strengthened the association.

Partisans down in Texas haven’t been shy in their evangelism, either. In 2013, Texas Monthly hired Daniel Vaughn as the country’s first full-time barbecue editor. Shortly thereafter, the magazine brashly declared brisket to be “The Mount Everest of Barbecue” and the top 50 barbecue joints in Texas to also be the Top 50 in the world.

The barbecue boom was on. Food trucks popped up on street corners across the country, with pitmasters churning out brisket and hot links on custom wood-fired smokers. Classically trained chefs hung up their saucepans to open barbecue joints, making pilgrimages down to Texas to crib techniques and styles. They introduced a new generation of diners to traditional barbecue, and the offering tended to be Texas’s “Holy Trinity” of smoked brisket, sausage, and ribs—cementing in impressionable minds that this is what “real” barbecue is.

It’s time to set the record straight—and not because there’s anything wrong with the way Texans cook barbecue. (I have never been known to turn down a big pile of brisket on brown butcher paper.) The problem is that the Central Texas style is just one of America’s many vibrant and diverse barbecue traditions, and its tenets and strictures shouldn't define the entire field.

Here are five "rules" that may apply down in Texas, but should be taken with a grain of salt (and perhaps a little black pepper, too) when sampling barbecue everywhere else.

Rule 1: You have to wait in line to get good barbecue.

Image via Flickr/Robb1e

The reality: People in Austin may have nothing better to do with their mornings than queue up for smoked brisket, but that isn’t the case most everywhere else. Like all restaurants, barbecue businesses have their busy times, but at most spots (including a lot of the South’s most celebrated joints) customers can walk right in and place their order within minutes. They’re trying to eat lunch, after all, not ride Space Mountain.

The fevered hype that surrounds Franklin Barbecue and other Texas hot spotshas created the odd notion that eating barbecue should be a once-in-a-lifetime, bucket-list experience. Traditionally, though, it’s been a much more down-to-earth mode of eating, and one closely tied to community and fellowship. Sure, you can queue up for barbecue in other parts of the South. The lines on Sunday at Parker’s in Wilson, North Carolina, are legendary, but that’s because everyone just got out of church and showed up at the same time. On other days you can snag a seat right away. And that’s how it should be.

Rule 2: The best restaurants cut fresh and sell out when it’s gone.

Image via Yelp

The reality: A lot of Texan pitmasters cook only a certain amount of meat each day, and once it’s gone they close up shop—which could be at 1pm on a busy day, or early evening on a slow one. This helps control food costs, I suppose, by preventing unsold leftovers, but it makes barbecue-buying a bit of a crap shoot for customers arriving after the noon hour.

Yes, I know all the reasons. Dedicated artisans cook fresh each day and slice to order so each and every bite is as good as it can be. And it’s true that Texas-style brisket can be transcendent when cut fresh to order and akin to shoe leather if pre-sliced and allowed to languish for hours on a steam table.

But that isn’t the case with other types of barbecue. One of the brilliant things about Pee Dee South Carolina-style whole hog is that it holds really well. The last time I went to Scott’s in Hemingway, I was already running late for an event up in North Carolina, so I got a pound to go and put the styrofoam container on the front seat of my car. I ate the spicy ‘cue one pinch at a time as I zoomed up I-95. Three hours later, as I pulled into Chapel Hill, the last bite was every bit as good as the first.

You can also put Scott’s pulled pork in the refrigerator and microwave it for a fine lunch the next day. It’s not going to be quite as good as fresh off the pit, but it’s pretty damned close.

I’m not even sure the whole selling-out thing is necessary with Texas-style ‘cue. When John Lewis moved from Austin to Charleston to open Lewis Barbecue, he figured out quickly that South Carolinians don’t like showing up at 7pm and finding a sold out sign on the door. Lewis has calibrated his operations to stagger the meat on the pits so he can open at 11am and still have splendid brisket and hot guts on hand until the doors close at 10pm. Here in the Palmetto State, we call that “hospitality.”

Rule 3: Good barbecue doesn't need sauce.

Image via homeonwheels.us

The reality:You see this assertion all over Yelp reviews for restaurants around the country, and it always baffles me. Yes, a few Texas joints make an explicit point of not serving sauce, even upon request. (Kreuz Market in Lockhart declares it on their T-shirts). That’s fine and dandy, but let’s not impose such strictures on the rest of the country. A splendid variety of sauces is an essential element to America’s diverse regional barbecue styles.

And good luck saying “hold the sauce” at Skylight Inn in Ayden, North Carolina, or at Sweatman’s in Holly Hill, South Carolina. At Skylight, they douse the pork with vinegar and Texas Pete while it’s still being chopped, and at Sweatman’s they mop down the hogs with a mustard-laced concoction while it’s still simmering on the pit. Sauce is integral to the whole process.

Rule 4: It's all about the meat.

Image via Yelp

The reality: Obviously, you can’t have barbecue without meat, but the Texas vogue has taken things a bit far. The Internet is plastered with overhead photos of butcher paper-lined trays groaning with brisket, ribs, and sausage. There may be a tiny scoop of potato salad off in one corner and a pinch of pickles and onions somewhere on the side, but, by weight, the ratio of meat to everything else has got to be around ten to one.

Central Texas barbecue grew up in the region’s old meat markets, so it’s not surprising that the carnivorous parts are so foregrounded. But in other places the meat is just one element of a more balanced meal. A western Tennessee-style barbecue sandwich, for instance, blends the smoky chew of slow-cooked pork with the crunch of slaw and the flash of tangy/sweet sauce. The traditional “barbecue tray” in the Piedmont of North Carolina, offers equal-sized portions of chopped pork, red sauce-laced slaw, and golden brown hushpuppies.

One might aspire to knock back two pounds of assorted smoked meats if they’re on some bucket-list barbecue tour. But if you have to actually go back to work and sit at a desk for the rest of the day, a chopped pork tray with slaw and hushpuppies is a wiser choice.

Rule 5: Barbecue is smoked.

Image via Yelp

The reality:Texans pioneered the offset smoker, in which split oak logs are burned in a firebox on the side, and the smoke is drawn across the cooking chamber and out a tall chimney on the other side, effectively bathing the meat in smoke while it cooks. This indirect heat method makes for tender, delicious brisket and beef ribs with a lovely red ring and a big hit of smoke upon first bite.

But that’s not the only way to cook barbecue. In many parts of the South they use direct heat, which is to say pits fired with shovelfuls of glowing embers. Those coals are produced by burning down logs in a separate barrel or chimney, so most of the smoke never comes anywhere near the pit. Instead, the meat is cooked by direct heat radiating up from the coals. Barbecue made this way has a subtle hint of wood smoke, not a punch-you-in-the-mouth dose of it.

In my neck of the woods, you’ll never hear someone ask, “what’s on the smoker?” We call it a “pit,” or maybe a “cooker.” You smoke bacon or country ham, but you cook barbecue. Unless you’re in Texas, of course.

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